Waste Not, Want Not

"We have managed since Benny’s heyday to get a little carried away. Alan Greenspan and the Chinese gave us too much credit, unfettered bankers chose greed over sobriety, and consumers snapped up McMansions financed by loans they could never repay. In 1980, American household debt stood at what must have seemed the enormous sum of $1.4 trillion. Last year the figure was 10 times as large, only 24 percent of us were debt free, and more than half of college students carried at least four credit cards. Is it any wonder there were more than a million consumer bankruptcy filings last year? Or that the nation’s banking system came close to collapse? The result of all this excess is a people hung-over from its recent intoxication with spending and flabbergasted by the bill from the wine merchant."

Daniel Akst at The Wilson Quarterly heralds the return of thrift.